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It’s incredible people like you with all this bullshit, speaking of oneness and still saying “me,” “my,” “I.” If there is only oneness how can you talk about past lives? It’s all about the money and it’s a shame. – Mario M.

When I received the email above, I realized I needed a simple, short, clear, explanation for what my “message” is all about.

This is it.

Enlightenment versus Oneness

I woke up to what I used to call enlightenment on September 17, 2009 after a three week collapse of my identity. See Wayne’s Enlightenment Transition for the day-by-day blog entries as it happened.

This is a blog, it isn’t a book, and as such, my ideas, concepts, and understanding of what was happening to me were written “real time” and were based on my limited (and mostly theoretical) understanding. As I was to find out, things change dramatically when you live it rather than when you just think about it.

For one, I no longer consider it enlightenment as that implies a fixed thing or destination. Oneness is a much more dynamic, open, and mystical description which fits the state much more accurately.

Mortal, Soul, Radiance, Emptiness… Oneness

(Note: I have currently stopped taking on new students while I delve deeper into the mysteries of being a Mystic. See this post for more info.)

I teach a path to awakening—a step-by-step approach—not a bunch of theories about what enlightenment is nor a bunch of mental games of “you are already enlightened” circular logic (as most nondual teachers do today). To go directly from ego-centric to enlightenment is like trying to go from kindergarten directly to college. A very few gifted students could do it, but the vast majority would fail miserably.

The Path of Mystical Oneness takes the seeker through five stages of spiritual development: From Mortal (ego-centric), to Soul (ergo the past life criticism), to Radiance (Love and Surrender), to Emptiness (enlightenment), to Oneness (integration). With each step, a portion of your identity is dropped and your sense of self softens.

Live it. Don’t Just Think it.

Unlike most nondual teaching though, this is a lived path. It is not just theory. Students live as a Soul, live as Radiance, live as Oneness.

The benefits of living it versus just understanding it may seem obvious, but what the practice almost immediately reveals is just how much conditioning affects our thoughts and actions. You can rationally understand enlightenment as a no-self concept, but if you aren’t living it, then you obviously haven’t “got it” yet.

This lived experience versus rational theory should be blatantly obvious when you come across one of the hundreds of websites out there today of someone claiming to be enlightened, yet who do not talk about their day-to-day lives. They rationally understand enlightenment (at least they understand what everyone else is saying about it), but they don’t live it. Wouldn’t you find a personal blog of an enlightened individual useful? They know you would, and yet they consciously have decided not to share their day-to-day lives. Why is that? Because they are fooling themselves. They truly think they are awake, but in reality, they are only educated. It’s really quite sad.

The I-Thing

That brings us to the “I” thing. When you wake up, there is no longer a “you” or, more accurately, an identity. There is no Wayne Wirs, or Wayne (Wirs) or Wayne, or teacher or writer or or nomad or photographer. From the Oneness perspective, there is just a dynamic, moving Awareness appearing inside this vast, boundless, Openness (the Openness is “you,” not the Awareness). The Awareness (“Witness” in nondual-speak) is centered in a particular human body. A body which is forced to interact with the world.

As this identityless-Awareness-arising-in-Openness-centered-in-a-human-body, it is much simpler to say “I” rather than, as Jiddu Krishnamurti used to say, “the speaker.” That just seems silly and eccentric and if the speaker went to the DMV to get the speaker’s driver’s licensed renewed and replied that “the speaker wishes to be an organ donor” then there is a highly likely chance that not only will he not get his organ donor card, he may get his driver’s license revoked. “I” is just a much more useful term.

Why Mysticism

So why the mysticism? Why does the speaker (see how silly that is?) insist on bringing the supernatural into the equation?

Two things drove me to mysticism.

The first is synchronicity (meaningful coincidences). As you begin to wake up, synchronistic events happen in your life far more often. After you wake up, they happen multiple times a day. The only way to explain synchronicity is that there is a intelligent, caring supernatural being who is directly interacting and controlling objects and events around you. In other words, synchronicity implies God (whom I call Her).

The second thing that drove me to mysticism is Will. Why would Pure Awareness/Boundless Openness want to do anything? Everything is Self, everything is One, nothing needs to be done, all is Perfect. What then, drives all this stuff? Why don’t enlightened people (who according to nondual theorists are desire-less), why don’t they just sit down on their butts until they die? What drives them? What drives Life? The answer is quite simple and can be summed up in one word: Love.

When you move through the level of Radiance, you begin to feel is a profound sense of outward flowing Love. A selfless, pure, unconditional Love moves through you. As you learn to flow with this Love, you start to realize that it has a purpose behind it—a Will.

But here’s the thing, in my decades as a spiritual seeker, I spent maybe two days practicing in the Radiant Level (I didn’t know that was what I was doing, but there you go). So when I woke up, I was still quite the nondualist. In my first description of the Radiant level, I was calling it the Enlightenment of Passion. It was only later that the implications of Radiance (the implications of a single Intelligence) would convert me to a mystic.

In Closing

Do you see how different the mystic’s perspective of Oneness is from nondual, theoretical enlightenment? As Oneness, She and you merge together and there is no longer a She nor a you—just pure Perception. But there are steps to getting to this pure state—to soften your identity from Mortal to Soul to Radiance to Oneness—and that is what this work is all about. Not enlightenment, not some mental theory, but a lived and felt Mystical Oneness.

Peace,

Wayne (Wirs)

PS: Blog posts are often categorized by topic (see Topics in the right sidebar). You may find those links useful for exploring this site. Click here to follow my blog via RSS (email, newsreader, etc).

I can only give you my personal insights into what this Will is: It is Her “using” you (at the Radiant level, your biggest issue will be your desire versus Her desire and surrendering to Her desire).

Why is She “using” you? To what purpose? Again, from experience, many times it is to help you progress, to release your “trying.” To help soften you so She can know Herself through you. Other times, and this is quite cool, it is to help others. See this post for an excellent example of this in action.

Great blog!! I found it through Greg Morrisette’s posts. I will begin following and reading…sometimes the most difficult to begin is the ‘living!’ I have always felt there there is a magnificent force in the Universe and like you, have experienced it in many different ways. I want to begin a nomadic lifestyle…but circumstances don’t allow me to at this point. I’ve enjoyed the video from yesterday–1/30/12–and will read more. May She continue to guide you and keep you near!!

Well, I leave today to begin actually ACTING on the great adventure I’ve been living in my mind for years. Looking back, I was being told to do this for 3-5 years…I didn’t listen…and it’s been very painful as SHE has taken away almost everything from me and wrestled me into submission.

Hi Wayne
Interesting exploration. Thanks for sharing. While I certainly understand your objection to blogs that just spout theory and argue position, suggesting a description of day to day experiences is the only way to explore I disagree with. Because my own process has been somewhat non-standard and I have no interest in making it about a me, I tend to explore the underlying process and the discoveries. This can seem more conceptual but has helped a number of people.

What I find most useful is a diversity of voices sharing their perspectives. There are many paths to the one place. But there are too many voices insisting there is one shift, that they have it, and are confusing the inner unity of Self realization with Oneness. True Oneness is totally inclusive.

From comments above, you’ve moved past the model but I enjoyed your “Three Enlightenments” series. From a lived realization standpoint, it’s more typical for it to be Stillness, Radiance and Oneness. Further, our mind-driven culture tends to delay Radiance because of the refinement and heart aspects of its unfoldment. We’re less familiar or comfortable with much of that.

Enjoying hearing you talk about ‘your’ life, thanks. ‘I’ haven’t felt any desire to share ‘mine’, not sure why. Maybe it’s because ‘I’ am no longer my former identity, the experience has lost some apparent coherence. There’s no agenda and no ‘story’ anymore. Any blog of mine would probably resemble the random egoistic takes of a celebrity who assumes that people must (ought to:-) be interested in what s/he is doing. Also, though I am no longer the rider, the horse still seems to want to trot along mostly familiar routes. So ‘I’ haven’t made any big break with the past and things continue much the same as before, except I’m perhaps more surprised (if less concerned) when people project onto me (Who me ? But I don’t exist !) Yet one notices too that the speaker is still being drawn towards pleasure (beauty, truth) and repelled by pain (ugliness, violence, greed), even though it’s all ‘me’. What’s going on ?-)

Discovered you quite by chance via youtube. Watched 2 of your video clip things. You sooo easily got thru to me. I actually understood exactly what you were saying! It all made sense. That felt really good. I look forward to tomorrow to watch the next one.
Much love. Thank you. A bientôt!

Thanks Wayne
Your comments about Will remind me of the age-old arguments about free will and choice. My view is that any apparent problem is solved by understanding that there is a relative and an absolute perspective. In relative terms, “choice” and “free will” are linguistic conveniences for dealing with daily living. In absolute terms, there is nobody there to choose and only the probability of change exists in any moment.

The way to enlightenment has been taught for centuries. To see the truth we must give up our attachments and contemplate the truth. It is a process. If a person did everything that Jesus taught literally and meditated on His sayings in the New Testament they would wake up. Buddha taught the middle way and believe it or not if a person did everything Buddha taught they would also be doing everything that Jesus taught. It is about recognizing that what we call the ego in our modern vernacular is an illusion and that in reality our being is whole and complete lacking nothing. It is the sense of lack that causes a person to have desires and to reach out and grasp and cling. That clinging is where all compulsory behaviors come from and enslaves us. It is all based in fear. When we follow the teachings, not what you here in church, but when you actually do what is taught you are giving up the behaviors that reinforce the ego. Along with contemplation and meditation a person can gradually and suddenly in some cases come to know the truth. When we are born we are a clean slate of consciousness and as we grow we are told things by the authority figures in our life and we have experiences and we take all this information and we process it and we come to a conclusion as to who we are but this self image only exists as an idea in our mind and we take it to be the truth of who we are. It is this image we have of ourselves that dictates to us what we do with our lives and what to believe. This is the “I” that does not exist and it is the source of all fear and suffering in our lives. Breaking free from this conditioning is the spiritual path and realizing the truth of it is enlightenment or awakening itself which ever word you prefer.

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